I am helping a small company with two networked computers and no server be able to share and update a single Filemaker database simultaneously without buying the Server Edition, which they tell me is $1,000 regardless of how many users. I thought maybe someone would know this one offhand.

I networked my Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard and my Titanium running Panther. I have Filemaker 8.5 which I bought for the Ti because it never ran Tiger very well and Filemaker is nice in the fact that they offer a free upgrade to 8.5v2 that allows it to run under SL.

I got a DB to show up and be editable on both computers but the edits on one were not reflected on the other which rendered the whole setup useless. Is purchasing the server edition the only solution? Like a lot of other programs, I only know Filemaker well enough to do the things I have to do.

They are running Leopard on both computers and Filemaker 11. Does that make any difference? It is very disruptive to their workflow to do all kinds of experimenting there.

Any help is deeply appreciated.

Slo

they want their G. you're not likely to get away from that.

Yep, you need the server version.

Creating a shared database such that multiple clients all automatically update when the database updates is a nontrivial thing to do, hence the cost.

I'm afraid that's not true, tacit. You can open a single FileMaker database residing on one machine and access it from another.

You need to have different serial numbered copies of FileMaker Pro on the host machine (where the FileMaker Pro data file is located), and on any machines that want to access/modify the data. You don't directly open the data file on the client machine. Rather, you use File>Open Remote...

You need to have Sharing enabled for the host machine's copy of FileMaker Pro, and to have identified the file(s) to be shared, and who is allowed to access it/them. (File>FileMaker Network...)

This will even work over the internet if the correct port redirection has been set up in your broadband router.

You can even modify the database deign this way.

Of course, many things work much more efficiently using FileMaker Server to host the file. For example, With FileMaker Server, searches and sorts are done on the host, but the search or sort needs to be done on the client otherwise which makes for a lot of additional network/internet traffic.

To access a database on a client machine, choose File>Open Remote...
Of course, the database must be already open on the host machine.

Think of this as database sharing rather than file sharing. File sharing does not even have to be enabled.

A couple of other points:
1. I often create a "opener" file on the client machine, which is an empty database - no tables defined, no data - which has a script that executes on opening that opens the real file remotely, and then closes itself. That way the user at the client machine has no need to know how to open it remotely - I just put something called "Start Database" or some such in the dock.

2. FileMaker Server has provision for automatic timed backups, which is not available using this peer-peer database sharing. What I often do is write a script that makes a duplicate copy of the database automatically on opening or closing. While a database file that is open will not backup reliable in Time Machine, the duplicate copy, which os never itself used, will backup fine. All that needs to happen then is that the database gets closed and re=opened reasonable regularly - say daily.


I have clients whose FileMaker databases I maintain in this way without having to be on site.

Explore "sharing" in the help system for more details.

Thank you so much. There are some very clever ideas here! Sorry it took so long to get back to you with a thank you but things got a little hectic.

Glad to be if help!